What's the difference between disconsolate and melancholy?

Disconsolate


Definition:

  • (n.) Disconsolateness.
  • (v. t.) Destitute of consolation; deeply dejected and dispirited; hopelessly sad; comfortless; filled with grief; as, a bereaved and disconsolate parent.
  • (v. t.) Inspiring dejection; saddening; cheerless; as, the disconsolate darkness of the winter nights.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) I suspect you would have said that even it wasn’t a pile of poo,” Lidington observed disconsolately.
  • (2) But not so – sadly for Labour business spokesman Chuka Umunna and his disconsolate cohorts.
  • (3) Morrissey: Lord of the Flies Wave upon wave upon wave upon wave washed me up on the desolate, disconsolate island of Rock Celebrity.
  • (4) But the picture of them sitting disconsolately at home, wrapped in Asda's hot-selling "snuggies" (blankets with sleeves) with the heating turned down, is probably misleading.
  • (5) We made mistakes and Agüero is a world-class finisher,” a disconsolate Steve McClaren said.
  • (6) Any further delay [to imposing the contract] just means we will take longer to eliminate [the] weekend effect [of higher death rates among patients admitted to hospital on a Saturday or Sunday].” The Guardian view on the government’s problems: time for intelligent compromise | Editorial Read more The MPs involved were disconsolate at Hunt’s response to what they hoped was a face-saving solution for both sides.
  • (7) But far beyond his family, he leaves a host of disconsolate people, from his closest friends to those whose only acquaintance was through what he wrote and said, who know they have lost a rare, wondrously talented and wholly original man.
  • (8) By the fourth goal, one disconsolate Brazil fan near the giant screens on Copacabana beach walked over to a group of Germans and handed them his national flag in a gesture of surrender.
  • (9) After sliding in to try and stop Negredo scoring Manchester City's second, he got to his feet as if to trudg disconsolently back into position, only to go to ground in agony after something appeared to buckle in his knee.
  • (10) Even the most disconsolate and recalcitrant rebel concedes that the party has spoken and that the leader’s mandate commands attention, even humility, although not yet sincere respect.
  • (11) Among angry teachers and disconsolate pupils, there is a particularly loud outcry about shifts in the grade thresholds in GCSE English.
  • (12) It was the correct decision by the letter of the law, though not by the spirit of the final, as shown when Ashley Williams ran over to console Duke – a former team-mate at Stockport County – as he trudged away disconsolately after the first sending off of his career.
  • (13) "We felt disconsolate [about the North Koreans' pullout] at first, but we didn't know that would it would last this long," said Yeo Dongkoo, director at Sudo Corporation, which produces handkerchiefs and scarves at Kaesong.
  • (14) Occasionally groups of disconsolate policemen armed with old Kalashnikovs squat in roadside posts but there is an overwhelming if diffuse sense of threat.
  • (15) Disconsolate pandas have struggled to breed but that little inconvenience has now been overcome.
  • (16) Here, Pratt appeared to be the leader, pepping up his disconsolate comrades for the challenges ahead at a time of toil and heartache.
  • (17) By then, the Conservative battle bus, with David Cameron on board, was heading disconsolately for Wales.
  • (18) Akinfeev was disconsolate as he trudged off the pitch and into an encouraging if somewhat strange high five from Capello.
  • (19) This shared conviction left Sunderland’s manager looking on disconsolate as, inspired by Christian Eriksen, Pochettino’s Tottenham monopolised the ball.
  • (20) Colleagues who remained at their campaign headquarters in Appleton were disconsolate, slumped before a computer screen, slowly realising that almost 500 days of rebellion had ended in failure despite impressive mobilisation of their base.

Melancholy


Definition:

  • (n.) Depression of spirits; a gloomy state continuing a considerable time; deep dejection; gloominess.
  • (n.) Great and continued depression of spirits, amounting to mental unsoundness; melancholia.
  • (n.) Pensive maditation; serious thoughtfulness.
  • (n.) Ill nature.
  • (a.) Depressed in spirits; dejected; gloomy dismal.
  • (a.) Producing great evil and grief; causing dejection; calamitous; afflictive; as, a melancholy event.
  • (a.) Somewhat deranged in mind; having the jugment impaired.
  • (a.) Favorable to meditation; somber.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) One radio critic described Jacobs' late night Sunday show as a "tidying-up time, a time for wistfulness, melancholy, a recognition that there were once great things and great feelings in this world.
  • (2) And melancholy is not the only thing that links Haigh’s work.
  • (3) Melancholy originally had another meaning from the present one.
  • (4) the agitated type of involutional melancholy occurred twice as often in Canada as in Hungary, the apathetic cases were rarer in Canada, and the illness began earlier among Canadian women.
  • (5) Thus New Zealand, like other countries, may be entering an age of melancholy.
  • (6) English explanations stressed religious aspects and a relationship to melancholy.
  • (7) I too was attracted to the paintings of De Chirico and Delvaux, with their dreamplaces – empty, melancholy cities, abandoned temples, broken statues, shadows, exaggerated perspectives.
  • (8) Earlier this week in Janesville, where post-industrial melancholy is evident in a closed car plant and eerily quiet downtown, House speaker Paul Ryan crushed a Trump-style challenger in a congressional primary.
  • (9) There was always a rueful melancholy, stiffened by irony and leavened by humour about him.
  • (10) Song of the summer was Waterloo Sunset by the Kinks, with its odd blend of keening melancholy and positivism.
  • (11) Resorting to a series of Ted the swordsman scenes which may merely be the lurid fantasies of the heroine, director Christine Jeffs never makes it clear whether Hughes was a rampaging philanderer whose sexual conquests and general obliviousness to Plath's mounting depression led to her demise, or a man driven into other women's arms by his wife's chronic melancholy - perhaps the most time-honoured excuse of the inveterate tomcat - or both.
  • (12) "Oh, if one of Dostoevsky's novels, whose black melancholy is regarded with such indulgent admiration, were signed with the name of Goncourt, what a slating it would get all along the line."
  • (13) It's a melancholy fate for any writer to become an eponym for all that he despised, but that is what happened to George Orwell, whose memory is routinely abused in unthinking uses of the adjective "Orwellian".
  • (14) As the lead singer with the Walker Brothers, he enjoyed a number of melancholy hits with songs such as The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore, My Ship Is Coming In, No Regrets.
  • (15) The leading role is infinitely variable: as Oscar Wilde said , "There are as many Hamlets as there are melancholies."
  • (16) In the right light and with the right song playing on the radio, there is a certain melancholy charm to this bleak highway with its unfolding panorama of wind turbines and electricity pylons stretching to the horizon.
  • (17) On the contrary: Sørens incomparable melancholy, mental agony and anxiety (fear or anguish) forced the faith, existing independently of them, in a radical refining.
  • (18) There’s a magnificent melancholy about him, this shadowy figure performing an act of unrequited love.
  • (19) Closer is a melancholy piece but it is also laugh-out-loud funny, often, as in the very best drama, at moments of starkest pain.
  • (20) Research is needed to determine whether youth will be predisposed to further depressive episodes and, if so, will we be entering a new age of melancholy?